In the kitchen

I've been cooking and baking some this week, which is fun for me. Remember when I had a cooking blog? That's clearly gone by the way, and so has trying lots of new recipes. It seems for the last year I mostly do quick and old standbys unless I know I'm going to have extra time. I hope to get back into trying new and involved recipes some day, but that's not realistic on a day to day basis for this season of my life. But, that being said, I enjoy cooking, and think it is important to make time for the relationships you had (marriage, friendships) and things you enjoyed doing prior to becoming a parent.

So, here some things I made this week:

The last time I made these cookies from Annie Eats, I just cooked a few and then rolled the rest into balls, and placed them on a cookie sheet in the freezer. When they were frozen I put them in a ziplock and back in the freezer. Its great to have the homemade dough on hand to just cook a few when needed or more if people are coming over. This week I pulled some out and made heart shaped cookies.


I made a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. Isabella LOVES these. This time I used half whole wheat flour and half regular and cut down the amount of chocolate chips. They freeze beautifully so they are nice to have on hand for breakfast or snacks.


Heather and I got together for a quick freezer cooking session on Friday.


We made up a batch of high protein pumpkin pancakes to freeze and have on hand for the girl's breakfasts. We adapted the recipe from this blog. We used greek yogurt instead of cottage cheese and whole wheat flour instead of dry oats.


We also made 2 batches of meatballs, Maui chicken, and honey pork chops. All of these recipes are from the book "Don't panic dinner's in the freezer". I own these books now, but they can also be borrowed from the library. I don't have a huge freezer, so part of what I liked about the books is that it details ways to freeze the meals so that they take up as little space as possible. I love having meals on hand that are ready to go or just need some sides added to them. I'd like to try to add in a couple hours of freezer cooking each week to make dinner prep go smoother. I'd had "host a meal exchange" on my 30 list, but didn't get around to it. But I hope to do that in the next month or so.


We had a family gathering to go to and I made my mom's Sunday Rolls. They are so good!


And I had a bit of dough left from the rolls, so I made it into cinnamon rolls for us to have for breakfast this weekend.
This week I hope to make our friend's amazing homemade spaghetti sauce and some delicious brownies.